LORD WINDERMERE. My dear child, you are not well. You’ve been doing too much. Let us go away to the country. You’ll be all right at Selby. The season is almost over. There is no use staying on. Poor darling! We’ll go away to-day, if you like. [Rises.] We can easily catch the 3.40. I’ll send a wire to Fannen. [Crosses and sits down at table to write a telegram.]
LADY WINDERMERE. Yes; let us go away to-day. No; I can’t go to-day, Arthur. There is some one I must see before I leave town - some one who has been kind to me.
LORD WINDERMERE. [Rising and leaning over sofa.] Kind to you?
LADY WINDERMERE. Far more than that. [Rises and goes to him.] I will tell you, Arthur, but only love me, love me as you used to love me.
LORD WINDERMERE. Used to? You are not thinking of that wretched woman who came here last night? [Coming round and sitting R. of her.] You don’t still imagine - no, you couldn’t.
LADY WINDERMERE. I don’t. I know now I was wrong and foolish.
LORD WINDERMERE. It was very good of you to receive her last night - but you are never to see her again.
LADY WINDERMERE. Why do you say that? [A pause.]
LORD WINDERMERE. [Holding her hand.] Margaret, I thought Mrs. Erlynne was a woman more sinned against than sinning, as the phrase goes. I thought she wanted to be good, to get back into a place that she had lost by a moment’s folly, to lead again a decent life. I believed what she told me - I was mistaken in her. She is bad - as bad as a woman can be.
LADY WINDERMERE. Arthur, Arthur, don’t talk so bitterly about any woman. I don’t think now that people can be divided into the good and the bad as though they were two separate races or creations. What are called good women may have terrible things in them, mad moods of recklessness, assertion, jealousy, sin. Bad women, as they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, pity, sacrifice. And I don’t think Mrs. Erlynne a bad woman - I know she’s not.
LORD WINDERMERE. My dear child, the woman’s impossible. No matter what harm she tries to do us, you must never see her again. She is inadmissible anywhere.
LADY WINDERMERE. But I want to see her. I want her to come here.
LORD WINDERMERE. Never!
LADY WINDERMERE. She came here once as your guest. She must come now as mine. That is but fair.
LORD WINDERMERE. She should never have come here.
LADY WINDERMERE. [Rising.] It is too late, Arthur, to say that now. [Moves away.]
LORD WINDERMERE. [Rising.] Margaret, if you knew where Mrs. Erlynne went last night, after she left this house, you would not sit in the same room with her. It was absolutely shameless, the whole thing.
LADY WINDERMERE. Arthur, I can’t bear it any longer. I must tell you. Last night -
[Enter PARKER with a tray on which lie LADY WINDERMERE’S fan and a card.]
PARKER. Mrs. Erlynne has called to return your ladyship’s fan which she took away by mistake last night. Mrs. Erlynne has written a message on the card.
LADY WINDERMERE. Oh, ask Mrs. Erlynne to be kind enough to come up. [Reads card.] Say I shall be very glad to see her. [Exit PARKER.] She wants to see me, Arthur.
LORD WINDERMERE. [Takes card and looks at it.] Margaret, I beg you not to. Let me see her first, at any rate. She’s a very dangerous woman. She is the most dangerous woman I know. You don’t realise what you’re doing.
LADY WINDERMERE. It is right that I should see her.
LORD WINDERMERE. My child, you may be on the brink of a great sorrow. Don’t go to meet it. It is absolutely necessary that I should see her before you do.
LADY WINDERMERE. Why should it be necessary?
[Enter PARKER.]
PARKER. Mrs. Erlynne.
[Enter MRS. ERLYNNE.]
[Exit PARKER.]
MRS. ERLYNNE. How do you do, Lady Windermere? [To LORD WINDERMERE.] How do you do? Do you know, Lady Windermere, I am so sorry about your fan. I can’t imagine how I made such a silly mistake. Most stupid of me. And as I was driving in your direction, I thought I would take the opportunity of returning your property in person with many apologies for my carelessness, and of bidding you goodbye.
LADY WINDERMERE. Goodbye? [Moves towards sofa with MRS. ERLYNNE and sits down beside her.] Are you going away, then, Mrs. Erlynne?
MRS. ERLYNNE. Yes; I am going to live abroad again. The English climate doesn’t suit me. My - heart is affected here, and that I don’t like. I prefer living in the south. London is too full of fogs and - and serious people, Lord Windermere. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know, but the whole thing rather gets on my nerves, and so I’m leaving this afternoon by the Club Train.
LADY WINDERMERE. This afternoon? But I wanted so much to come and see you.
MRS. ERLYNNE. How kind of you! But I am afraid I have to go.
LADY WINDERMERE. Shall I never see you again, Mrs. Erlynne?
MRS. ERLYNNE. I am afraid not. Our lives lie too far apart. But there is a little thing I would like you to do for me. I want a photograph of you, Lady Windermere - would you give me one? You don’t know how gratified I should be.
LADY WINDERMERE. Oh, with pleasure. There is one on that table. I’ll show it to you. [Goes across to the table.]
LORD WINDERMERE. [Coming up to MRS. ERLYNNE and speaking in a low voice.] It is monstrous your intruding yourself here after your conduct last night.
MRS. ERLYNNE. [With an amused smile.] My dear Windermere, manners before morals!
LADY WINDERMERE. [Returning.] I’m afraid it is very flattering - I am not so pretty as that. [Showing photograph.]
MRS. ERLYNNE. You are much prettier. But haven’t you got one of yourself with your little boy?
LADY WINDERMERE. I have. Would you prefer one of those?
MRS. ERLYNNE. Yes.
LADY WINDERMERE. I’ll go and get it for you, if you’ll excuse me for a moment. I have one upstairs.
MRS. ERLYNNE. So sorry, Lady Windermere, to give you so much trouble.
LADY WINDERMERE. [Moves to door R.] No trouble at all, Mrs. Erlynne.
MRS. ERLYNNE. Thanks so much.
[Exit LADY WINDERMERE R.] You seem rather out of temper this morning, Windermere. Why should you be? Margaret and I get on charmingly together.
LORD WINDERMERE. I can’t bear to see you with her. Besides, you have not told me the truth, Mrs. Erlynne.
MRS. ERLYNNE. I have not told her the truth, you mean.
LORD WINDERMERE. [Standing C.] I sometimes wish you had. I should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know - that the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living - a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be - rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don’t understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her. You sully the innocence that is in her.